Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VII GREAT CHAMBER AND HALL SERVICE IN THE HOUSEHOLD Yet if his majesty our sovereign lord Should of his own accord Friendly himself invite, And say "I'll be your guest tomorrow night," How should we stir ourselves, call and command All hands to work! Let no man idle stand. Set me fine Spanish table in the hall, See they be fitted all; Let there be room to eat, And order taken that there want no meat. See every sconce and candlestick made bright, That without tapers they may give a light. Look to the presence: are the carpets spread, The dais o'er the head, The cushions in the chairs, And all the candles lighted on the stairs! Let each man give attendance in his place. — Elizabethan Lyrics — Bui/len. Among the many rooms and apartments which the castles of the English nobility invariably contained, there were always two of conspicuous importance in the routine life of the household; these were the Great, or Dining Chamber, and the Great Hall. The Great Chamber was generally on the second floor — "above stairs" was the common expression in regard to its location, — near the head of the principal or grand stairway; with the exception of the Hall, it was probably the largest room in the castle, and could conveniently accommodate quite an assemblage. Thus the Great Chamber in Raglan Castle, the seat of the Earls of Worcester, in Monmouthshire, was forty-nine by twenty-one feet,1 while that at Haddon House in Derbyshire,one of the residences of the Earls of Rutland, was probably about two-thirds as large as the Hall itself.2 1 MSS. of the Duke of Beaufort, 2. The Hall was situated on the ground floor of the castle, and its proportions, always majestic, were no mean gauge of the wealth and position of its noble own...